


The thing with feathers

by anna_rr



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: F/M, Post-Troubled Blood, Troubled Blood Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:02:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26684836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anna_rr/pseuds/anna_rr
Summary: Set just after the end ofTroubled Blood.  A new dawn, and a robin singing.That’s my cryptic, spoiler-free description.  But you know the drill - if you haven’t read it, turn right around. Spoilers abound!
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 26
Kudos: 97





	The thing with feathers

He’s woken by singing: a woman’s voice, an assorted medley of lyrics and tune; sometimes, both. It’s a sound - Strike thinks, groggy, but guarded - that’s usually a sign of a good night, and a potentially awkward morning.

Where is he? Snatches of memory - or dreams? - lap at the edge of his consciousness, sleep ebbing but leaving a blur in its wake. _Come on_ , he thinks, _you’re a detective for goodness sake_. He takes stock of the evidence. He’s lying on a sofa - an innocuous IKEA grey - wearing his shirt and boxers, a musky, bruised floral scent lingering on his collar. Two glasses sit, side-by-side, on a coffee table - more distinct, antique - alongside a bottle of whisky with only the dregs remaining.

He props himself up on his elbows, and the singing stops.

“Morning,” she says.

Robin - of course it’s Robin - is smiling across at him from the kitchen, hair wet from the shower, barefoot and wrapped in a dressing gown. It’s firmly belted; thick, creamy towelling fit for a Yorkshire winter, but still, it’s a dressing gown and that says - something. Something that makes it OK that he’s here and his trousers are, well - there.

“Tea?”

There are two things he needs more than tea right now, a piss and a smoke, and he needs his leg before he can get round to either of them. Where is it?

Scanning the room, that dressing gown ever lurking in his peripheral vision, he’s suddenly aware of warm breath very close to him, and a rough sensation oddly like a caress...is - is someone _licking_ his stump?

“Wolfgang!” Robin admonishes the grey-flecked dachshund, who shuffles back to the dog bed, giving him a mournful stare. “You’ve made an impression,” she says, winking, and he’s not absolutely sure if she’s talking to him or the dog.

Bemusement crosses her face as she stoops to give the dog a conciliatory pat. “Here,” she says, retrieving his prosthetic leg and passing it back to him. Strike doesn’t know whether to be annoyed or impressed. How does a small, geriatric dog manage to make off with a leg that he knows is hardly light to carry around?

“He has a thing for shoes,” Robin explains, apparently reading his mind. “I guess he dragged it.”

With the mystery of the missing leg solved, his mind turns to the more pressing case. What exactly has happened here? Retrieving his trousers from the nearby chair, as casually as he can muster, he glances across at her. She seems unembarrassed, as if there’s nothing she’s not seen at this point - but then, he thinks, if the night went well enough to make her sing, shouldn’t she be a little bit embarrassed?

He looks again at the tell-tale glasses on the coffee table. How is it that lightweight Ellacott is so dewy this morning when he feels like he’s lost three rounds to a bear?

“I’m doing eggs - do you want some?”

She’s very beautiful this morning, that clear-eyed gaze bordered by smudges of last night’s make-up, and he thinks he’d probably say yes to anything she offered, even a whole plate of vegetarian bacon.

“Sounds good. Give me ten minutes.”

She nods. “Bathroom’s on the way down.”

They’re always upstairs, he thinks, making his way down to the floor below. Juliet and her balcony. Rapunzel in the tower. He thinks of all the times his romantic history has had him dragging himself up by the stair rail. Just for once, couldn’t a girl live on the ground floor?

From a door slightly ajar a balloon donkey is winking at him. It occurs to him that behind that door is a room full of evidence; a glimpse would probably be enough to answer a whole lot of questions he has about last night. She did, after all, direct him here with what is basically code between them for “snoop around.” But he shuts that down quickly: it would be violating something between them, even if he’s a bit hazy, just now, on what exactly is between them - and besides, the balloon donkey looks like he might be a grass. He puts the thought aside, and heads on down to the front door.

It’s a muted London morning, watercolour sunlight seeping through a pale sky. He lights up, the tang of smoke shifting his thoughts slowly back into focus. He turns his mind back to the previous afternoon: that last cigarette to restore his equilibrium, his nerves strangely heightened as he’d locked up the office early.

Taking Robin to the Ritz had been her idea, really. She’d sarcastically suggested it that night - _the_ night - he’d elbowed her in the face, and he owes it to her for that, if nothing else. But he finds himself enjoying it beyond the satisfaction of giving Robin pleasure. It’s discreet: everyone there is focused on their own special occasion; no celebrity spotters loitering in the background. It’s not like Hello’s been knocking on their door, but their part in two high profile cases has brought them both unwanted attention: the two of them out on what must look like a date (is it a date?) would only stir the pot.

Amidst the opulent surroundings, they discuss humbler pleasures: the respective merits of Cornwall and Yorkshire; childhood holidays and mis-spent school trips. She fills him in on the back story of Noddy the donkey, and he finds himself handing over stories of Aunt Joan and Uncle Ted that he’d always protected, moments of normality he’d not wanted raked over the way so many events of his early life had been. He knows better than anyone that she’s astute enough to see through the things he doesn’t say: maybe that’s why he tells her. She makes him laugh with tales of the various characters she’d encountered in her temp career, that deft assessment of people she has, and asks him questions about his time in the army that he surprises himself by enjoying answering. And all the while he knows that he is responsible - at least partly responsible, at this moment - for that bright light in her eyes, a glow that catches her necklace, and that dress. Blue-grey, blue-green, blue-there-and-there-and- ...he pours her another glass, his focus fixed not as firmly as it might be on the task in hand.

Five o’clock had felt early enough not to impinge on any other plans she might have had, but it’s later than he’d thought by the time they leave.

“I’ll see you home,” he says.

“You don’t have to,” is the extent of her objection, which he takes as assent.

She indicates the nearby station. “I was getting the Tube.”

On a bad day, he avoids the underground. But today is not a bad day.

“Works for me,” he says, and follows her through the barrier. He always has to hunch a little to grasp the handrail on the escalator, knowing that balance is not his strong point and wanting to avoid starting a human domino run if he can. It means that when she turns up to talk to him, he’s leaning in to her, and he wonders - ridiculously - if they’ve squeezed in more steps on the escalator since he was last here, because she seems like she’s standing very close.

If he’d called them a cab, it would have meant dropping her off on his way home: getting out at her place would have felt awkward, and unnecessary. Getting the Tube means - what does it mean? Did she think of it too? He thinks this, as the train rounds a corner and already off-balance from the champagne, she’s swung against him, her face buried in his neck.

“I - sorry,” she laughs, extracting herself, only to be replaced by the young man engrossed in a battered paperback who’s toppled by the bend immediately after. By a heroic effort she suppresses the laughter he sees flickering in her eyes, as her accidental rival beats a hasty retreat to the far side of the carriage.

A row of budget restaurants greets them as they emerge from the station: the Turkish cafe doubling as an Italian by night; the Thai place garlanded with plastic flowers; the warm lights and aroma of the curry house. Tempted as they both were by the £700 exotic fish eggs, their Ritz dining experience had been snacks at best - nibbles, really - and Strike feels hungry. He thinks that he can hardly ply her with alcohol and let her go home on an empty stomach, and wonders whether on top of all the other lines he’s trespassed today, asking her to dinner might be too much.

Hunger wins, and he risks it. “Do you want to get something to eat?”

That could mean, from Tesco Express. It doesn’t have to signify dinner. It’s her call.

“I’ve got stuff at home,” she says, and he thinks it’s a dismissal, although it occurs to him a moment later that it could just as easily be an invitation. So he treads carefully.

“It’s your birthday. Can’t I get you a takeaway?” Takeaway is safe. Takeaway says best mates.

“Only if you’ll help me eat it.”

Takeaway is not safe. He thinks about the last time they had takeaway - Skegness aside - and feels his heart thud a little bit faster.

“Would Max like something?” He tells himself he’s asking this out of courtesy, but he’s lying if he doesn’t know what this interrogation is really after.

“Max is away filming.”

The memory of those four sweet words catches him sharply in the throat, and he coughs. He takes a long drag on his cigarette, reaching deeper into the fog of memory for what had followed.

As they walk down her road, the scent of perfume drifts on the night air, and he’s taken back to that moment outside Liberty’s earlier in the day. His experiences with women number many memories worth replaying should he want to. Perhaps he’s more susceptible to champagne than he thought: why else would he keep returning to a kiss on the cheek? The truth is, something effervescent and intoxicating has got under his defences this evening. He knows it’s not the champagne.

She turns back to him at her front door.

“This - ” she pokes a finger into his chest “Was a very good birthday.”

 _Was_ , he notes, as unbidden, his hand takes hold of hers, still against his chest. Is that a goodbye?  
 _Was_ , he thinks, as he lifts her hand, and looks at it, a beat too long. After all, it’s been a good night. It’s not a bad place to leave it.  
 _Was_ , he tells himself, as by some superhuman effort, he hands her the bag with the cartons and steps back.

She takes it, and smiles. “Come on then,” she says, leading the way.

He steps forward.

He’s been here before, of course. Apart from the cheesecake, there’s not much of that evening he chooses to dwell on. But it’s not that night he recalls, spooning rice into a bowl while Robin pours them each a glass of water and searches in the freezer for ice.

It’s clear she’s thinking of it too; she smiles up at him as she indicates the ice. “It’s a precautionary measure.”

That champagne sparkle has settled into something deeper; as they eat, their conversation falls into the well-worn pattern of their usual office banter, but her gaze rests on his face in a way that’s not entirely work-like, and since he catches it, he suspects that’s not a one-way thing. He refills their glasses, and she chinks the ice against the side as he hands hers back to her.

“To getting older,” she says.

There are a million cliches he could offer and walk away intact. Many happy returns. To past, present and future. Here’s looking at you, kid. But those blue-grey eyes are fixed on his, and he remembers how she is with people, the way she gets them to give up truths.

“The thing about your thirties,” he says, willing her to understand, and half-hoping she won’t, “It gets better by the end.”

Memories of that other night hang thick in the air like whisky fumes. Maybe that’s what makes her fetch the bottle from the collection on the cabinet, and pour more than a wee dram into both their glasses, leaning towards him a little as she sits back down.

“It’s Max’s,” she confesses, conspiratorially. “He won’t mind.”

Max. Strike crushes the cigarette under his foot as it all comes back. With an actor’s precision he’d timed his entrance at that exact moment, Wolfgang padding across the tension with a definite lack of canine sixth sense, and some of the other five in doubt.

“You’re back already,” Robin had got up abruptly from her perch on the arm of the sofa. “Birthday drink?” she’d offered, holding out the glass she’d poured for herself.

“Thanks,” Max had said, taking it as he’d sunk into a chair. “Filming’s off tomorrow; the barracks aren’t available until next week now. Cheers, Robin. Happy birthday.” He’d turned and clinked his glass against Strike’s. “Cormoran.”

The empty bottle of Scotch, the two glasses. He’d already accepted a refill, he remembers, when Robin bid them both goodnight. He likes Max. He recalls - it gets murky as it goes on - Max relaying anecdotes from his recent filming experience, questioning inaccuracies in the script; his own insight into army life somehow leading to them comparing the hospital experiences that had changed each of their lives. He dimly remembers the topic of Max’s new boyfriend, and tries not to think about what he might have contributed to a drunken conservation about relationships, nor how thick the walls might be.

The sun has picked up a notch as he heads back up, a stripe of gold through the kitchen window catching that still-damp hair. The dressing gown is gone - replaced, he mentally amends, but not quick enough to stop the visual flit through his mind - replaced by jeans and a honey-coloured jumper that he suspects from its shop-new sheen is a birthday present.

“Eggs are ready,” she says. “And poppadoms.”

If Carlsberg did mornings after, they’d include leftover takeaway for breakfast. Even if it’s not exactly a morning after.

It’s optimism, he thinks, sitting down opposite her. The singing. The brightness. It’s not the glow of post-coital bliss, and while that’s a glow he can’t say he’d mind taking credit for, mostly he’s relieved it’s a line still uncrossed. There’s still time, he thinks; time to protect their business; to protect them; still time for that memorable night to be something he actually remembers. And he catches himself too late, doing that thing he’s done a lot lately, tipping their ‘if’ into a ‘when’.

Max comes in, whistling, although he has the grace to look bleary-eyed, and the black coffee he makes himself is clearly on the strong side.

Strike clears away the breakfast things and goes to pick up his suit jacket - thankfully, not re-purposed as a dog blanket, but still neatly folded across a chair.

“Are you coming to the office?” he asks, because it’s a safer question than the other one, the one where he asks her back to his after work.

“No, I’m taking over from Barclay at ten,” she answers. “I guess I’ll see you this evening?”

For one wild moment he thinks she’s exposed him with that psychic streak again, and then he remembers, Ilsa’s dinner party, and he’s sort of relieved, and thwarted, and stupidly glad he has another night out with her all at the same time.

He takes his leave, but he hears footsteps on the stairs behind him as he reaches the front door.

“Thank you,” she says.

He grins as he turns back to face her. “Happy new decade.”

It reminds her of something. “What are you doing for your birthday?”

“Hopefully, nothing.” He grimaces. “Inventing something to stop Lucy or Ilsa springing anything on me.”

“Would you like an alibi?”

His breath catches a little as he replies. “You know me, always looking for a good alibi.” He looks at her, hoping that he’s understood her meaning, the look that she gave him as she said it. “Has to be watertight.”

She smiles. “Then it’s a date.”

It’s not a feeling he indulges very often, but maybe it’s catching, he thinks, as he heads out into the day. The sun on his back and he feels it too. Optimism.

He might even sing.

**Author's Note:**

> In my head, this was called ‘Morning after’, but it felt too spoilery. The title is stolen from Emily Dickinson. Hope (or optimism) of course, is the thing with feathers - but so is the robin.


End file.
